How to start your family tree Part 1

Over the next few posts I will be going back to basics. I will be explaining how to build your family tree from the beginning. My focus will be on New South Wales records but the principles can be applied anywhere.

What is it for?

First, you need to decide what you want to get out of it. What is your goal? There are many reasons for starting research into your family history, such as

to find out whether you really are related to Charles Dickens or Mary Queen of Scots

to find out whether great-great-grandfather really was a sea-captain

to see how far back you can go

to build an ancestral chart for your children

to find out what your ancestors were like and understand their lives better

What you want to get out of it will determine how you go about it. It will also help you to know when you get there! You may stop when you discover that there is no link between you and Charles Dickens, or you may become inspired to keep going and find out about your own family history – the heroes and villains and interesting characters. The goal may change over time and that’s OK, but it is still important to know what it is.

Start with what you know

Whatever your reasons, and whatever your goals, you must start with what you know. Everyone says this to you, and it sounds very boring, but it’s true. It’s no good tracing the descendants of Charles Dickens hoping that you will eventually find the link to your own family. It never works. You have to start with accurate information and this necessarily means that you must start with your own parents and grandparents and work backwards in time, up the tree.

Talk to your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and find out what they know, or think they know. Record everything, and make sure you record who told you.

Collect all the documents, photographs and other pieces of paper that you can find from your relatives. Old birth, baptism, marriage and death certificates; newspaper cuttings; school reports; old charts and reports from the previous research of relatives; anything and everything may be useful.

You can then start to look at these bits and pieces more thoroughly and decide for yourself which can be trusted and which may just give ideas for further research. A hand-drawn chart with names, dates and places might be very interesting and even disappointing if you think that it’s all been done already, but unless the chart has sources that can be verified then it is just a starting point and not the end result.

Recording information

You will need some sort of method for recording information and keeping track of it. Most of us these days use some sort of computer software, and if you are reading this you are familiar enough with computers to not be daunted by this.

If you don’t already have a family tree program, try one or more of the free ones first. Here are a couple of examples:

Personal Ancestral File is the most commonly used, and possibly the best, of the free programs. Published by the Mormon church.

Many other programs have a free trial version that you can use for 30 days to see if you like it before you buy it. Some no longer work after the 30 days without entering your registration code, which you will be sent once you’ve paid, and others allow continued use with reduced features. It’s worth looking around for a program that suits you and your goals – you’ll be spending a lot of time with it!

Test each program by entering a few people and compare how easy they are to use and whether you like the way information is displayed. Consider the features you think you will need – there is no point paying extra for them if you won’t use them, and you won’t use them if they look too complicated. Don’t pay for 27 different types of charts in 101 colours if you will only ever print simple ones in black and white.

Sources

Once you find a program you like enter everything you have, and make sure you enter the sources of your information. Sources are incredibly important and often overlooked by new family tree climbers. Eventually you will get conflicting information and you will need to know where each piece of information came from so that you can determine which piece is more reliable. A date that your Aunty Mabel told you may be less (or more!) reliable than the date on a birth certificate, but you won’t know which one to use if you don’t know where each one came from.

You may think now that you’ll remember who told you what and who gave you each photograph and piece of paper but in a few months or a few years you’ll lose track. We all do. Neither will you be able to tell someone who asks where the information came from. Your research will not be convincing to anyone else unless you can show where your information came from.

This will not be the last time I will be talking about sources – they are crucial!

Backing up

Back up your computer. This is another thing that people neglect until it is too late and then it is a catastrophe. Don’t risk all your hard work being lost when your computer dies (and they all do, eventually). Back up your important files and keep the copies physically separate from your computer. You can use a flash drive, rewritable CDs or DVDs or an external hard drive. Online backup systems are becoming more popular and can be very reassuring if you find a good one. I use Mozy, but there are many others, with differing costs.

You can also upload your family tree to a website such as Ancestry or Rootsweb to make it available to other researchers. This has the added advantage of acting as a backup if something catastrophic happens to your files, your computer, or your house as many of these sites allow you to download the whole file back to your computer.

Filing

You will also need some sort of filing system so that you can find that piece of paper again when you need it. Tossing it all into a box is a sure way to frustration and possible disaster. Use ring-binders and sheet protectors, or a filing cabinet, or scan all the documents and keep them filed on your computer. Make sure that you use acid-free mounts and protectors for original photographs and documents so that they do not deteriorate further, and label everything with as much information as you can – who is involved (especially for photographs), where it came from and who gave it to you.

Documents are harder to back up but not impossible. Scanning them means that a digital copy will hopefully be backed up with your family tree. Distributing copies to interested relatives is a good way of ensuring that the documents are backed up. You could also donate a copy of your research to a genealogical society such as The Society of Australian Genealogists.

What’s next?

Most of what we have covered today is preparation for the real work of research. That’s where the fun really is. We will start talking about research in the next post – what to look for and where to find it.

I am Carole Riley of Sydney, Australia and this is my genealogy research business. I can help you to find out who your Australian ancestors are and I can usually trace them back to their country of origin. I can also help you find out their stories and mysteries - who they were, what they did for a living, where they lived and died.

I am the author of Land Research for Family Historians in Australia and New Zealand (2012), Evernote for Family Historians (2015), and Social Media for Family Historians (2010 and 2012). I am a past Vice President of the Society of Australian Genealogists and former editor of their journal, Descent. I am also a past Director of the Association of Professional Genealogists. Read More…